"You sure you don't want a posse, Richard?"
Neville looked at Prine. "I just want your deputy to ride with me. He's a good shot, and he knew Cassie slightly. That gives him a little bit of a stake in this. That all right with you, Prine?"
Prine, in his state of mind—fear and confusion—wondered if Neville knew about his role in the kidnapping. Not reporting it, then Cassie dying—what if he knew? What if this was a trap of some kind? But he quickly answered, "Sure. I'll leave whenever you want to."
"Let's go right now."
"Get yourself some extra rifle rounds," Daly said. He obviously didn't approve of Neville's plans, but he wasn't about to try and stop the man. His sister had been killed. He had first dibs on how they went after her killers. Plus—and there was always this plus with the Neville family—he was the most powerful man in this area of the state.
Prine got himself ready. He dug out his Bowie knife and scabbard, his field glasses, and his saddle roll. He took thirty extra Winchester rounds.
"In case we don't run up against them," Neville said as Prine was gathering up his extra gear, "you tell the newspaper to print up a hundred fliers saying there's a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for anybody who brings them in dead or alive. But I think you know the way I'd prefer them to come back to town."
"I sure do, Richard," Daly, ever the Neville enthusiast, said. "I sure do."
Prine went out and got his horse ready and his canteen filled, then spoke to a couple of deadbeats who still hadn't sucked enough excitement from the fruit of this wonderful moment when a beautiful rich girl went and got herself killed.
Neville came out then. The deadbeats asked him something Prine didn't hear. Neville didn't try and placate them at all. He just scowled at them and brought his horse around with such force that the deadbeats were forced to jump out of the way.
He said absolutely nothing to Prine. He just galloped away and expected Prine to catch up.
Chapter Thirteen
They rode toward the sun.
The land was a patchwork of changing topography. They rode through a long, wide stand of timber that had been divided down the center to create a road. They forged a river wild from recent rains. They traveled a stretch of desertlike land where the only things that seemed to bloom were timid-looking cactus and scruffy gray plants. Always, the distant mountains rose to the sky to their right. After two that afternoon, the temperature began to fall. Rain clouds with spider legs could be seen in the distance. It wouldn't be long before they'd get the rain and probably lose the tracks they were following.
The first place they'd stopped was the deserted farmhouse where Cassie had been kept. They'd found that two horses had headed toward the sun. They also found that the shoes on one of the horses had been put on at an an odd angle, making it reasonably easy to keep track of.
Most of the time they didn't talk much. A few times Prine heard Neville muttering to himself. Probably the rage got to be so much he had to express it. This was a very different Neville than the glad-hander he'd met at the mansion the other night. He felt sorry for this Neville, and ashamed that he hadn't done his duty as a lawman.
The rain started midafternoon. They continued to follow the tracks as far as they could, finally cresting a hill that overlooked a stage station.
"Looks like they might have stopped down there," Prine said. "I wonder why."
"Let's go find out."
Thunder rippled across the sky and a slash of lightning cast everything into a hellish, colorless relief that made the tracks they were following almost grotesquely dark. The devil would leave such tracks.
The stage station wasn't as bad as some. The barns and stables that held fresh animals and supplies looked well-kept and cleaned. The front yard wasn't a field of animal shit. It had been raked, and you could see that grass was trying very hard to pop up here and there. You could almost hear it straining.
They knew what awaited them if they stayed here. The food would run to tainted bacon and hard biscuits and water just starting to go bad. That was the usual repast, anyway.
They were lucky. The rain came smashing down, beads of hail and all, three or four minutes after they entered the sod-roofed stage station.
The layout was typical. Fireplace, three large, picnic-style tables, an open area for males to sleep on at night. Far in the corner was an extra-large bed where the station manager's wife slept, usually with a few of the female guests. The dirt floor didn't look like a barnyard, and the food smells surprised them. Some kind of stew bubbling in a pot.
From the outbuildings came the shouts of the station manager's three kids. They'd been battening everything down, given the ferocity of the rain.
The station man turned out to look like a parson—tall, grave, and disapproving of everything that passed before his eyes. He was probably thirty and looked sixty. His bald and gleaming scalp didn't help. Nor did his severe mouth and pinched eyes. He offered neither a hand nor a greeting.
"You didn't come in on the stage," he said.
"Good guess," Prine said.
"You were standing out there watching us come in."
"We're waiting for a stage now. There won't be any room for extras tonight."
"We're not looking to be put up for the night," Neville said. "We're looking for two men."
A woman came through the doorway. She was soaked. She bent over and wrung her dark hair out with strong but nicely shaped hands. When she looked up, they saw her face. She was everything her husband was not. She actually smiled at them.
Her husband said, "I told them there's no room."
She spoke in a joshing way. "Frank's getting old. He forgets things. There's plenty of room in the barn, if you don't mind the loft."
"We won't be needing a place if the rain lets up," Prine said. 'What we want is some information."
"Well," she said, elbowing old Frank in the ribs, "you came to the wrong place. Frank wouldn't tell you the time of day if you gave him the watch. He don't cotton much to strangers."
"Seems like he's in the right business," Prine said.
She smiled. "I'm Beth, by the way." She glanced impishly at her husband. "That's the way you have to talk to Frank. Make fun of him a little. God knows he deserves it, don't you, Frank?"
And then the damnedest thing happened. The hard face of Ichabod started reluctantly—very reluctantly—breaking into a tiny smile. Tiny, tiny, the way a kid will smile against his will when you start to tickle him.
"Damned women," he said, and then stalked out the front door and angled off, disappearing, presumably, for the barn or one of the other outbuildings.
She said, "He gets jealous. Sees two gents like you—nice-looking and nice manners and you with that badge—he always thinks I'm gonna leave him. That's what happened to his first wife. Up and left him for a traveling salesman. Took their only kid and he's never seen either of them again. I guess I wouldn't trust nobody either, somethin' like that happened to me. I better go talk to him. Settle him down some."
"Guess we may as well wait out the storm," Prine said.
"I hate to lose the time."
"We'll have a hard time finding their tracks in a downpour like this."
Neville's jaw muscles started to work. "Guess you're right."
Kerosene lanterns played chase with the shadows in the large, rectangular room.
They ate a passable supper of fried potatoes and beans. The stage arrived just as they were finishing up. The two men sat in the corner watching the people straggle in. The rain was finally letting up. The stage passengers settled in for the night. The driver was soaked and had to borrow clothes from Frank Barstow. You could hear that he already had a bad head cold. By morning it would probably move down into his chest.