Closing up the bundle, Pat carefully wound the twine back around it and said, “We already dug up a grave. The rest didn’t seem like too much more to ask.”
For the first time since he’d started in on all of this, Lester got a real good impression of the rage seething behind Nick’s eyes when he’d been talking about someone disturbing his friend’s grave. In a frightened voice, Lester said, “We might want to pack up and get the hell away from here.”
Brimming with confidence over the fruits of his labor, Wesley said, “If those men want to come after my kin, they’ll have a fight on their hands. Besides, there’s three of us and only two of them, right?”
“But one of them’s a known killer,” Pat said. “I heard Graves killed his first man before he even fucked his first woman.”
“I’ve heard plenty of bad stories about Graves, too,” Wesley said. “That don’t make ’em all true. “Just the same, though, maybe we should put the odds more in our favor. You still got them shotguns from when Uncle Mike visited us last spring to do some hunting?”
“Yeah, but one of them’s broken and we don’t have any shells.”
“Go back into town and buy some shells. Buy a new gun while you’re at it. We make sure the wives are armed along with us and it’ll be five against two. That should work out better all around.”
“I just got back from town,” Pat told him. “Stores are closed. I’m not heading straight back there.”
“Then I’ll go in the morning. Jesus Christ, you’re a whining cuss.”
“I’ll go with you,” Lester offered.
“You see there? Little cousin knows how to lend a hand when all of our asses are on the line.” Wesley booted Pat in the backside as the younger cousin went back to put the bundle in its hiding spot. “We’ll take turns keeping watch, and Lester and I’ll head into town come first light. Odds are that them two won’t even find us out here.”
Lester nodded, doing his best to mirror Wesley’s confidence.
He was given a room and allowed to sleep while the other two cousins kept watch. The more he thought about Nick’s reputation with a gun and Kinman’s reputation for tracking, the harder it was for Lester to get any rest.
TWENTY-FOUR
By the time he and Kinman had broken camp and ridden out the next morning, Nick knew how the bounty hunter was tracking Lester. It wasn’t easy to spot at first, but Nick had managed to pick out the pattern that kept showing up among the tracks in the dirt. Kinman seemed to enjoy doing his job and was damn good at it, so Nick let him keep the lead. For the moment, their end goal was the same.
“You ever hear of Pat or Wesley Harbor?” Kinman asked after he’d gotten his bearings and was preparing his horse for the day’s ride.
Nick cinched up the last buckle on Kazys’s saddlebags and shrugged. “I’ve been to Boston Harbor.”
“They ain’t places. They’re people. Ever hear of ’em?”
After thinking about it once more, Nick came up with even less than before. “No. I guess I haven’t.”
“They’re Lester’s cousins. By the looks of it, he may be heading out to meet them.”
“If you know where to find them, we should be able to work out a shortcut. That should shave off some time.”
“If I knew where to find them, I would’ve found them already. They’re wanted men, mostly for working with your friend Barrett Cobb.”
Nick recognized the way Kinman was staring at him. It was the look that was in a man’s eye when he asked a question that he figured you already knew the answer to. It reminded Nick of the smug distrust that poured from a lawman’s eyes. “Barrett worked with plenty of men. He used them for a lot of jobs so none of them would know too much.”
“You worked with him, too.”
“Me and Barrett also worked with a lot of other fellas. If you want to know where they are, I can take you to their graves. Some of them are still somewhere in Montana, but I’m sure you’d be more than welcome to have a look around. Those vigilantes just love bounty hunters.”
“And they also love outlaws,” Kinman said without missing a beat. Making sure to stare at Nick’s mangled hand, he added, “I hear they take extra special time with the outlaws they like more’n anyone else.”
Nick nodded and climbed into his saddle. Once there, he made a particularly nasty gesture with the hand that was still in Kinman’s sights. “You want to lead the way or would you prefer to give Lester even more of a head start?”
“Don’t you worry about Lester. I’ve been tracking him long enough to know how his little pea brain works. His kin lives somewhere around a town named Hackett. He’ll run there just as surely as I’m sitting here.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” Nick asked while waving grandly toward the trail. “Lead the way.”
Kinman stared at Nick for a few seconds. In that short amount of time, Nick felt as if he could hear exactly what was running through the bounty hunter’s mind. The smugness in Kinman’s eyes, combined with the way he turned his back to Nick was proof that the bounty hunter thought he could take Nick down whenever he saw fit to do so.
As he watched Kinman snap his reins and get moving, Nick shifted his hand toward his pistol. He could put a bullet through that arrogant fool before Kinman even heard the shot that killed him. Nick could even dig a hole and plant Kinman in it without losing much time in his pursuit of Lester Peterson.
But of all the things Kinman was, he sure as hell wasn’t a fool.
Nick thought about that as his fingers brushed against the specially tooled leather of his holster. It was strapped across his belly, as it was whenever he was expecting a fight. Nick could draw a fraction of a second quicker that way.
Kinman may or may not have known that Nick had caught on to the trick he’d pulled with the shoe of Lester’s horse. Letting the name of that town drop, on the other hand, was something the bounty hunter had done on purpose. Any man would know that the name of the town closest to the spot they were after was a valuable piece of information. To a tracker, it would have been twice as valuable.
Perhaps Kinman was seeing if Nick would try to attack him and go on alone now that he had something to work with.
Then again, there was always the chance that Kinman was tired and had made a slip of the tongue.
No, Nick thought. That wasn’t a possibility.
“We’ve wasted enough time already,” Kinman shouted over his shoulder. “Stop lagging behind and let’s get moving.”
“No need to worry,” Nick shouted back. “I know where Hackett is and we should be able to get there around noon or so if we keep a good pace.”
Watching for Kinman’s reaction, Nick kept his hand over his holstered pistol. The tips of his fingers might have been mostly numb, but he could feel the smooth, curved iron well enough.
Kinman stopped.
For the next few seconds, he sat upon his horse while slowly cocking his head to one side. Finally, he turned and looked back at Nick and Kazys. “The best pace in the world won’t help us if we don’t leave this spot. Is something wrong with your horse, or are you content to let that asshole and his cousins live like kings off of them jewels?”
“I’m just making sure I didn’t leave anything behind,” Nick said, still keeping his hand on his gun.
Kinman started riding, but slowly enough so he could hear what was going on behind him. Nick recognized the cautious way Kinman flicked his reins as well as the way the bounty hunter kept his ears pricked for any sound he could pick up. When Nick began to follow, he saw Kinman’s posture relax a bit as both horses fell into a quick step.
There had to be something that Kinman was holding back. The more Nick thought about it, the more certain he became. A man didn’t get a reputation like Kinman’s by making slips of the tongue to men he clearly didn’t trust. Then again, Kinman had made the mistake of showing himself back in Rock Springs.