"Could be," Prine said, trying to keep his voice neutral. He didn't know if this would help or hurt his plan. Probably it wouldn't have any effect on it one way or the other. Still, it gave him an anxious feeling. "He describe the man?"
"He sure did."
And boy did he. A description that detailed was just about as good as a photograph.
"You be sure and tell him, Tom."
"Don't worry," Prine said. "I will."
He walked over to his horse, mounted up, and headed for the farmhouse and the root cellar.
The evening rush had started early at The Friendly Café. Lucy was asked to stay for a few extra hours to help out. Maybe it was tonight's cold weather, a large number of only occasional customers coming in for the kind of food they couldn't get at home.
Lucy was leaving work just as Harry Ryan cut across the street a block away to enter the sheriff's office. She recognized his silhouette by his size and by his long stride. Not many men could eat up ground the way Harry could.
She convinced herself to walk past the sheriff's office so she could say hello to Harry. Tom would be gone by now, in his room probably, or maybe out for a few beers.
He wouldn't be out with Cassie Neville.
She felt ashamed of not fearing for Cassie. It wasn't Cassie's fault that Tom no longer loved Lucy. It wasn't Cassie's fault that Lucy couldn't deal well with her loss of Tom. It wasn't Cassie's fault that she was rich and beautiful.
Lucy said a quick and sincere prayer for Cassie. That she'd be found soon. Alive and well.
When she reached Harry, she said, "Any word on Cassie Neville, Harry?"
"Oh, evening, Lucy. Afraid not. Nothing new, anyway."
"I just said a prayer for her."
"Everybody's praying. All the churches had special services for her this afternoon."
Harry touched his hat and went inside. In the open door, she saw Tom bent over his desk, working, and that combination of thrill and terror went through her with icy panic.
She didn't know which was worse. That he might see her in the dusk out here. Or that he might not see her.
She hesitated a moment, fighting the urge to go up to the door and slip inside, pretending that she didn't know Tom was in there. But no. No, she wouldn't do it. She had to get control of herself. This was a form of madness, and she knew it. There were articles in some of the women's magazines about how spurned women sometimes gave in to melancholia that led to insanity or suicide or murder. She didn't feel that she was close to any of these things yet. But it wasn't impossible to imagine that she might get there someday.
She hurried on to the livery stable. She needed to get a horse tonight. After supper, she planned to go to visit a patient whom she'd befriended at the hospital, an old miner who was dying of a bad heart.
The stable stank of old hay, road apples, horse, and the rain-soaked wood that had comprised the livery since shortly after the town had been built. She had stopped by here this morning, so the liveryman had a roan all picked out for her. He got it saddled and turned it over. She was good with horses. They generally seemed to like her as much as she liked them.
When she came out into the street, she saw Tom mounting his own horse in front of the sheriff's office. Again, her compulsion was to make him aware of her somehow. Catch up to him as if she didn't know it was him. Or fall in beside him and simply wish him good evening. Just a casual encounter.
But she knew it would be more than that. It always was. And it was always her fault for letting it become more than that.
She just sat on her horse, watching Tom move his animal away from the office. She wondered where he was going. East. Why would he be headed east? She tried to think of whom he might know in that direction.
She sat there for some time, thinking. And then she slowly began moving away from the livery, taking, at a good distance, the same route Tom was taking.
She was barely aware of what she was doing. She was almost trancelike. Her eyes saw but didn't see. Her ears heard but didn't hear. Her breath came in sharp little gasps. Where was she going? What was she doing? My Lord, he would hate her if he ever found out that she'd started following him like this.
He would hate her for sure.
Prine didn't become aware of the rider behind him until he reached the top of the hill that looked down on the farmhouse where Cassie was being kept. Or where he hoped she was being kept, anyway.
No light in the house, of course. Moonlight silvered the windows. An awning swung in the wind, banging against the window frame. A wild dog sniffed around the autumn-scorched grass in the front yard.
He heard the horse before seeing it. A narrow, rock-bottomed creek ran in the distance behind him. Horseshoes clicked against stone, announcing the arrival of horse and rider.
Prine yanked his Winchester from his scabbard, spurred his animal in among the shallow stand of jackpines to hide.
The rider was in no hurry to crest the hill. The horse was loping at best. All sorts of names and faces flashed through Prine's mind. Would the sheriff have followed him? Bob Carlyle? Maybe Richard Neville himself? Had somebody followed him previously and figured out what he was up to?
The scent of pine sap strong in his nostrils, Prine watched as a lone rider appeared in a bald patch on the top of the hill, just about where he'd sat his own horse. He sniffled. Pine sap always played hell with his sinuses.
His eyes refused at first to believe what his mind told him was true. A woman sat on the horse.
She dropped down from her mount, ground-tying her animal and walking closer to the rim of the hill so she could see below.
Why would a woman follow him out here?
He was about to find out, because he sneezed just then. The damned pinecone. Giving away his position.
The woman, bold, turned back toward him and said, "Who's there?" Speaking to the darkened stand of jackpines in front of her.
He recognized her now. "Lucy? Lucy, what the hell are you doing out here?"
"Is that you, Tom?"
He nudged his horse out from the jackpines, dropped down out of the saddle.
As he approached her, she said, "Oh, gosh, Tom. I'm such a fool. I—I swear it was almost like I couldn't help myself. I saw you leaving town. I was leaving, too. And I just started to follow you."
"Then you turn right around and go back to town. I'm working tonight, and you shouldn't be here."
Lucy said, "You think she could be down there? Wouldn't they have checked it earlier today?"
He was angry she looked so lovely in the moonlight. Maybe if she hadn't looked so good—evoking both his appreciative eye for female beauty and his guilt for leaving her—maybe then he would've been able to put her on her horse and send her back. But he couldn't.
Plus there was the matter of what she'd been able to surmise. He had to keep her quiet about this. He said, "I have to trust you with something."
"You know you can trust me, Tom."
"I swung past here this afternoon and I thought I saw three horses in the woods in back of the place. They may be keeping her in there. I wanted to wait till nightfall to find out."
"Why didn't you bring some help?"
"I don't want a shootout. They might kill Cassie if it came to that."
"I guess that's true."
He took her by the waist and drew her to him as he had so many other times. She was woman-warm in the chill night, her flesh feeling right and good beneath her jacket. "This is something that's between us, all right, Lucy? You didn't see me tonight. I'll just tell the sheriff that I was riding out to see Bob Carlyle's house when I saw a light in the place and decided to swing by."