He saw nothing. Not a man, not a horse, nothing.
But there were plenty of nooks and crannies in those boulders for Davis to hide in, and hide his horse in, too. He beckoned to Abe, who ground-tied Boy, too, and joined him.
“Crud,” Abe said quietly, after a moment. “You think he took off the other way while we was bein’ all sneaky?”
Jason shook his head and whispered, “No. We would have heard him. Sound carries like crazy out here.”
Abe nodded. “I know. Well, who goes first?”
“I do. It was my deputy that he gunned down.”
“Yeah,” said Abe, “but that was back in your jurisdiction.”
Rafe suddenly appeared between them and asked, “What’re you two cookin’ up over here?”
“Shhh!” hissed both Jason and Abe.
Rafe rolled his eyes. “You want Davis, he’s out here.”
Jason beat Abe to the edge of the rocks and sure enough, saw the silhouette of a rider jogging further south.
“You any good with that rifle of yours?” he asked Abe.
“Yeah. But Rafe’s a mite better.”
“Rafe! Consider yourself temporarily deputized.”
“But I—”
Abe cut him off. “He wants you to shoot Davis. He’s makin’ like he’s no good with a rifle.”
“Well, I’m not. Hurry up, he’s getting away!”
Rafe said, “Okay, okay!” and pulled his rifle from the saddle’s boot. Jason watched nervously as he sighted on Davis, then slowly—it seemed like a lifetime!—squeezed the trigger.
The blast took them all by surprise, Rafe included. But it took no one more off guard than Sampson Davis. He continued on a few steps, then slid awkwardly from his horse, disappearing into the tall weeds with a slump.
Abe clapped Rafe on the shoulder. “Helluva shot, kid, helluva shot! Your daddy’d be spit-polish proud!”
Rafe was staring at his rifle and didn’t look up. “I ’bout forgot how loud it was.”
“Well, let’s go pick him and his horse up.” Abe was already mounting his roan.
Jason hadn’t yet moved. “What if he’s not dead?” he asked, his voice flat. “What if he’s just lying there in the weeds, waiting for us to get close enough for him to pick us off?”
Abe tilted his head. “Good thinkin’, Jason. But if he is, there ain’t nothin’ we can do about it, ’cept get shot. C’mon, you two! Let’s move!”
Davis proved not to be dead, but he wasn’t far from it.
They loaded him on his horse, tied him down (after they relieved him of his firearms), and Jason found the gun he’d used to shoot Ward. It was a snub-nosed handgun, stuck down inside his boot—the one place Jason supposed Rafe and Lew hadn’t patted down when Davis was arrested the first time. When Rafe saw the gun, he at least had the good grace to look sheepish.
They started back. At a walk this time, not a gallop. Davis remained out cold, though Jason checked on him from time to time. His breathing was shallow but regular, so far as he could tell, and his color looked good. But he wasn’t taking any chances. He watched Davis like the proverbial hawk.
They were riding along when Abe said, out of the blue, “Y’know that creek we crossed on the way out?”
Jason looked over. “What of it?”
“It seem to you like it was some deeper than back in town, and quite a bit slower?”
Jason scratched the back of his head. “Come to think of it, yeah.”
“Somebody’s got ’er dammed up farther down the line, I reckon.”
Jason froze. Of course! What else would cause the Apache to attack at night? And it sure explained why Matt was so nervous! He spat, “Crap! MacDonald’s got it dammed up for his cattle so that it’s not reaching the Apache camp!”
He figured he’d go shoot a few arrows into MacDonald, too, if he cut off the water supply to Fury!
Abe nodded and said, “Thought so.”
Rafe jogged up from behind. “What you boys jabberin’ about up here?”
Jason filled him in, and he repeated Abe’s sentiment almost word for word. Then he said, “Don’t s’pose we could go check it out, could we?”
“Gotta get Davis back. Gotta check on Ward. After that . . .”
Rafe nodded. “Gotcha, Marshal. Me, I’m wantin’ to look in on ol’ Ward myself.” Then he brightened. “Did you see? He got Davis in the side, shot him right through the meat. Served the rat bastard right!” He spat into the weeds, as if to underscore what he’d just said.
“Only thing that would have served him better,” Abe said, “was if Ward had got him straight through the heart.”
Jason tended to agree with Abe, but said nothing, except, “Well, he’s sure shot now.”
“Think we can move this up into a jog, Jason?” Rafe asked. “I’m growin’ weary of ploddin’ along, and I wanna get back and see how ol’ Ward’s doin’.”
Jason goosed Cleo into a soft jog and the others followed suit, with Rafe muttering, “Thank God.”
Davis survived the trip back to town (more’s the pity), and Ward was still breathing, although Morelli wasn’t any too hopeful about his recovery. “The one in his shoulder isn’t too bad,” he told Jason, “but that other one went right through his lung. Patched him up the best I could, but . . .” He shook his head.
Ward lay there on Morelli’s table, with tubes coming out of him, tubes that drained pinkish fluid into glass jars. He looked like a ghost, he was so pale, and Jason said a silent prayer over him in the hope that somebody, somewhere, was listening.
They left Davis on a bench outside the surgery, and Morelli, after a cursory examination, said he didn’t look good at all, not with that slug in his side, and not with Rafe’s bullet having just missed his heart. He said he’d try, though.
It was all Jason could ask.
He wanted somebody left alive to hang.
And every one of them, to a man, got so wrapped up in Ward’s situation, dangling between life and death, that all thoughts of MacDonald and the dammed creek flew clean out of their heads.
For the time being, anyway.
19
The next morning, Jason woke to horrible news: Ward was dead. He had passed during the night, Morelli had told Jenny, who was up and awake to answer the door when he dropped by. Morelli seemed upset, as did Jenny, but Jason, while he shed a silent tear or two, thanked God that at least Ward hadn’t suffered at the end. He thanked Him for Ward’s life, and he thanked Him for Ward’s friendship, and for Ward’s company, even though it had been short-lived.
And then he prayed that God would let Davis live, so that he might have the pleasure of executing him.
He had never felt like this before, not even when his father passed, and while he couldn’t change the way he felt, he wondered that he, in fact, did feel that way.
When he got to the office, Morelli and Abe had already moved Davis over to the jail, and locked the patient safely in a cell. Abe, after saying how sorry he was about Ward’s demise, said the doc had warned him that Davis wouldn’t regain consciousness for at least two hours or so, which was fine with Jason. The less time he had to spend in the presence of Davis’s conscious mind, the better.
He had come to the conclusion that the man—if he was a man at all—was evil incarnate.
After Abe left, Jason went to the back room and wept again, crying for Ward, for himself, for Jenny, and for the town, but mostly for Ward. And then he pulled himself back together, and vowed this would be the last time he would ever cry for Ward. The very last time.
But Davis was going to pay, all right, and pay with his own life if Jason had any say in it. Briefly, he wished he could make him suffer, then booted the thought from his mind. Vengeance wasn’t his to parcel out. That belonged to a higher power.