Showdown (10 page)

"Sure."

"I want to know a few things about the ranch. That's why I wish I could talk to Neville."

"Well, I'll help you any way I can."

Daly resorted to his briar; Cummings started rolling a cigarette.

"Neville fire anybody lately?" Daly said.

"Not that I've heard of."

"Anybody been giving him trouble? Some old enemy?"

"Nope. Mike Perry bunks with all the boys, and he always tells us what's going on with 'the mister,' as the boys call him. He hasn't said anything about any enemies."

"Any cowhand seem to have it in for him?" Cummings grinned, his ancient, weathered face showing the boy that lingered somewhere inside him. "You asking me to speak out of school, Sheriff?"

"Out of school?"

"You asking me what the boys—and I'm including Mike Perry here—really think of Neville?"

Daly drew on his lighted pipe, savored the taste of tobacco. "They don't like him, huh?"

"You ever met many people who do?"

Daly smiled. "I see what you mean."

"If you're askin' if he's well-liked, hell no, he isn't. But if you're askin' if one of the boys would kidnap Miss Cassie, hell no, they wouldn't. You got to remember, most of the boys on the Bar Double N have been there ten, twenty years. A couple of them's been there almost thirty. They helped raise Miss Cassie. She's the opposite of her brother. She calls most of 'em 'uncle.' Uncle Bob and Uncle Bill and so on. Most of the hands never had time to get married or raise a family, so they sort of adopted her. They might do a number of things if they got pissed off enough at Neville—but they'd never touch Miss Cassie. Never."

Daly had his feet up on the desk. "Well, it doesn't have to be anybody from the ranch. I always try to look at the people around them first. But there've been so damned many kidnappings lately. A couple of convicts get out of prison with no money and no prospects, they start reading the papers to see who's got some money. And then right away they go after their child."

"That's probably what happened here."

Daly nodded. "Probably." Then: "How about Cassie? She have any enemies?"

Cummings snorted. "Cassie? Who'd have anything against Cassie? For one thing, even though she's lived here all her life, she's never really met a lot of people. The mister kept her pretty much sheltered since their father died. I expect this is just the kind of thing he was afraid of."

"Kidnapping?"

"Or rape. That's where an old enemy might fit in. Kidnap the mister's sister and rape her. The mister would go crazy. You don't see many suitors around Cassie, and that's why. He wants her to stay pure as long as he can. Right up to her wedding day. He knows he'll have to marry her off eventually. But until then, she's pretty much under his thumb."

"Then if it isn't a ranch hand and it isn't an angry suitor—we're probably back to some drifters who thought they saw an easy way to make some money."

"I don't like that choice at all."

"Neither do I," Daly said. "Those're the kind of men who end up killing the girls they steal."

T
he ride back at day's end was long and mostly silent, both men, Prine and Neville, given to their own thoughts and feelings. They'd gone all the way to the major river in the area and found nothing.

Now, hungry shadows gathering for the feast of night, they came to the outskirts of Claybank.

Neville said, "Maybe they found her. Maybe she's all right." The hope in his voice sounded young, naive. Prine was surprised he was capable of that kind of desperate hope. Neville seemed too hard and manipulative for that sort of self-delusion. But then, it was his sister and it was clear that he loved her despite the way he treated her. Or maybe he thought that the way he treated her proved that he loved her. Proved it at least to himself.

Both men were tired, dusty, in need of hot food, a place to park their asses that wasn't as unforgiving as a saddle, and time to share thoughts and theories with other members of the posses dispatched today.

At suppertime, Claybank moved slow. The stores were closed. Only the occasional wagon clattered its way through town. Even the saloons seemed tame by normal standards.

They headed straight for the sheriff's office. Sheriff Daly's big dun was at the hitching post. He was still saddled, meaning Daly had just gotten back or was ready to go home.

Daly and Bob Carlyle were pouring bourbon into their cups of coffee when Prine and Neville came in. The calm way they greeted the men meant that nobody had found Cassie—dead or alive.

"You two have any luck?" Daly said.

Prine shook his head. "They didn't head for the river. Not that we could see, anyway."

"I'm posting a ten-thousand-dollar reward right now," Neville said. "I should've done it before we left town."

Daly looked him over. "I didn't recognize you when you came in here, you know. Never saw you turned out like this."

Neville's voice was bitter. "You think because I have a lot of money, I just sit home counting it? I work hard, Sheriff."

"I didn't mean anything by that, Richard." Neville shrugged. "I suppose you didn't. But I get tired of people implying that I'm some kind of pantywaist. I'm good with a rope and a gun. And I can hog-tie a steer fast enough to get me into a rodeo."

Daly handed him the pint bottle of bourbon. "Why don't you suck on the witch's tit and see if you can calm yourself down, Richard?"

Prine was surprised to see Neville guzzle the liquor. No mincing little sip. Probably swallowed one-eighth of the bottle in a single gulp. Neville handed the bottle back to the sheriff, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Daly held the bottle up in Prine's direction. Prine shook his head.

"You'll probably have a letter waiting for you at your house," Daly said to Neville. "They'll tell you how much and they'll say where they want it delivered. If you want my advice, you'll pay them."

"Of course I'll pay them." Neville looked angry. "You think I wouldn't pay for my own sister?"

"Some people won't."

"Well, they don't have Cassie for a sister. I'd pay any amount they want."

"Don't be surprised if it's a lot of money."

"I just want her back." Neville nodded to Prine. "Then I'm going to ask you for the loan of your deputy here and we're going to hunt them down."

"I'm not sure I can do that," Daly said.

"You want to see them brought to justice, don't you?"

"Of course I do, Richard. But Prine here's a town employee. I can't hire him out freelance."

"What if I was to give the town a gift? I'll bet the mayor would let him go with me if I gave the town a generous gift."

"No offense, Richard. But Prine here's no manhunter. He's a town deputy. You'd be better off getting yourself a tracker or a bounty hunter. Those boys are used to work like that."

Prine, seeing that their disagreement might soon turn into an argument, both men being of the stubborn variety, said, "Why don't we worry about that when the time comes. Right now, Neville should go home and see if there's a ransom letter waiting. It's too late to do anything about it tonight. But why don't we all meet back here at eight this morning and make our plans then?"

Neville clapped Prine on the back. "Good idea. I need some rest, anyway." He glanced at all three of them. "I'll see you men tomorrow."

Prine settled in to look through his mail. Nothing interesting. He poured himself a cup of Davis's molten coffee and asked what the various teams of men had discovered.

"Not a hell of a lot," Daly said.

Prine carefully asked about several places they might have looked, working in the Knowles's farmhouse as casually as possible.

Carlyle joined in at that point. "There're four deserted farmhouses in the area. Men went through every one of them and didn't find anything."

"There's a root cellar at the Knowles place," Prine said. "They look there, too?"

"Looked everywhere. No sign of her."

Prine went back to his paperwork eventually. Or appeared to, anyway. Couldn't concentrate, of course. His stomach was tense and filled with acid. His throat with bile. He'd figured all along that they'd hide her in one of the many caves around the Knowles farmhouse. Way too many of those to check out. Then, at nightfall, they'd move her into the farmhouse and the root cellar.

But what if they hadn't? What if they'd changed their minds, figured that there was a better place to hide her? Then what?

There would go his reward. There would go his prominence. There would go his dream.

He made a show of being hungry. Three, four times over the course of the next hour, he talked about food. Finally, Daly said, "You convinced me, Tom. I'm headin' home to supper."

"Me, too," Carlyle said.

"Ryan's making his early rounds," Daly said. "You can lock up and leave if you want to."

"Might as well wait for him," Prine said.

"Thought you were so damned hungry," Daly said.

"I am, but I don't want to face this paperwork in the morning."

Daly shrugged. "Up to you."

They left.

All Prine accomplished while he waited for Harry Ryan, the night deputy, was working himself into a higher state of alarm. There was probably nothing to worry about. Probably everything was fine. Probably just about now they'd be moving her into the root cellar. Probably they would have delivered the ransom note and were now just waiting till morning to pick up the money. Probably.

But Prine couldn't let go of all the ways his plan could fail. Hell, it didn't take much imagination to think that they'd found a new and better place to hide her. He could remember his surprise that they picked a place so open and obvious. He could hear them making the argument for open and obvious—the posse would look at it early in their search, find it empty, move on, and then never bother them again. But it was still a perilous place to be should someone decide to recheck it the next day.

Prine wished he hadn't agreed to wait for Harry Ryan. Where the hell was he, anyway?

Prine got up and started pacing. That was a bad sign. Pacing was something he did only when everything started to overwhelm him . . .

Half an hour later, Harry Ryan came striding in. A large, square, affable man with a drinker's nose that was almost as scarlet as his hair, he said, "Hey, Tom, you didn't have to wait for me."

"That's all right. I had a lot of paperwork to do."

"Hell, you coulda just locked up and left. I woulda."

"Wasn't any trouble." Prine was back at his desk, pretending to be absorbed with all his paperwork. He stood up and yawned.

Ryan didn't have a desk of his own. There wasn't much inside work on the night shift. Mostly you ran in unruly drunks. He always sat at Daly's desk. "Say, I ran into Timmins over to the hardware store and he told me to tell Daly something. Maybe you could pass it along in the morning and save me the trouble of writin' it down."

Prine had seen some of Ryan's notes. He was barely literate and his notes not very understandable.

"Sure, what is it?" Prine said, heading for the door.

"Said a couple mornings when he was sweeping off the sidewalk, he seen this man watching Cassie Neville come into town on her buggy. Said the man used a stopwatch, like he wanted to know exactly what time she got here every morning. Sounds like one of the kidnappers to me."

"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.

T
he 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.